data.world, an Austin-based Public Benefit Corporation and Certified B Corporation that powers modern data teamwork, has raised $12 million third round of investment backed by Workday Ventures, The Associated Press, and crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. The investment brings data.world’s total funding to $45.3 million since its launch in 2016.
data.world works to replace “outdated barriers with deep connections between data, people, and impact.” The company reports that in its first two years, data.world has outpaced Github’s early user growth. The third round of funding will support the company’s mission to build “the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world.”
The Associated Press is one of data.world’s earliest customers. AP utilizes the data.world platform to share newsworthy data sets with news outlets it serves across the country. Through data.world, AP provides centralized access to data that its customers can mine for interesting story angles affecting their particular audiences.
OurCrowd’s community of 25,000+ investors completed the round, giving data.world a global reach into some of the most prominent scientists and entrepreneurs in the world.
“People who are deeply analyzing data are not in decision-making positions and decision makers seldom understand the complexities of data,” commented Brett Hurt, co-founder and CEO of data.world. “There is an urgent demand for a platform that bridges these gaps within an enterprise. The data divide between people and companies is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in corporate performance and longevity. Next-gen companies like Airbnb and Warby Parker were built to be data-driven from the ground up, and traditional Global 2000 companies are significantly behind and very motivated to catch up. And today we have the community know-how, integrations, customer service, and enterprise capabilities to help them rapidly do so.”
A future partnership between data.world and Workday may allow Workday users to more easily augment their enterprise data and analysis with the public data available on the platform.
Jon Medved, CEO of OurCrowd, said they are actively trying to mitigate the risks of investing in innovation.
“We accomplish this by giving investors in our network the ability to invest in people with proven track records. data.world’s product is a breakthrough, and the fact that their leadership team is also comprised of veteran entrepreneurs really generated some entrepreneurial excitement across our network.”
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